The Stratosphere: Phenomena, History, and Relevance

This book describes the discovery of the stratosphere itself and of various unexpected phenomena in the stratosphere: e.g., a manned balloon flight in 1901 as high as 11 km; an expedition to Lake Victoria in Africa in 1908 which found inexplicable west winds in the stratosphere above the equator; and the discovery of the ozone layer in the 1930s, the Berlin Phenomenon in 1952, the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation in 1960, the influence of volcanic eruptions in 1970, the ozone hole in 1984, and the influence of the 11-year solar cycle in 1987. The book also describes how these phenomena are connected with each other and how they create variability in the climate system, in addition to man-made changes, such as the decrease in ozone. We use the stratosphere as one example of Nature's complexity and of how often discoveries are ignored because they do not fit prevalent concepts.